Kari Lake
Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake hopes to secure a US Senate seat this year with the help of her longtime ally — Donald Trump — but the ex-president's support isn't promised, according to The Washington Post.
In January, Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit abruptly resigned after Lake "warned that she would 'leak additional recordings of their private conversations.'
When she later publicly endorsed fellow MAGA supporter Gina Swoboda to replace DeWit during a Republican event, Lake "was met with 'boos and jeers as she took the stage.'"
The Postreports:
Trump’s top advisers were furious after a Lake ally released a recording of then-Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit encouraging her to stay out of the Senate race, which embarrassed the party chairman and led him to resign.
Trump was more surprised than angry when told about the January incident, according to three people familiar with his reaction. 'She tapes everything?' he asked, sitting in a New Hampshire hotel suite before taking the stage on the night he won that state’s primary. 'That’s good to know.'
Now, the newspaper reports, "Since Lake jumped into the race, Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about her political prospects in a state he sees as key to his bid to return to the White House, and has shown annoyance with her frequent presence at his Florida resort, according to five people close to him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments."
Furthermore, the Post notes the incident "killed any desire by some elected Republicans in the state to communicate with her, fearing they could be secretly recorded."
One top Arizona Republican told the Post, “Whether they end up voting for Kari Lake or not, they don’t trust her. They think they’re being recorded and it’s a running joke.”
The newspaper emphasizes, "So far, there has been no public schism between Trump and Lake, and the Senate candidate was at Mar-a-Lago again this month for a fundraiser. But Trump’s frustration with Lake has only increased over the past year, heightening the tension between the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and one of his most prominent followers — casting doubt on whether Republicans can present a sufficiently united front to win a key U.S. Senate contest and a presidential battleground state."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem‘s bragging about dragging her 14-month old puppy into a gravel pit and shooting it to death because she “hated” the dog is likely the end of her political career, right-wing pundits are now saying.
On Friday when The Guardianbroke the news in a preview of Noem’s upcoming book, outrage on the left was immediate, but outrage on the right trickled in, then increased. Even with Noem doubling down, declaring her killing of the puppy (and a goat that same day, same way) happened 20 years ago, people on the right are expressing anger.
A Democratic pollster says 81% of Americans oppose Noem killing her puppy, The Guardian later reported.
“After learning about Gov. Noem’s actions, only 14 percent consider her to be a good choice for vice president on the Republican ticket. By a 2:1 margin, even Republicans say the governor would not be a good choice (42 percent vs. 21 percent),” the pollster, New River Strategies, stated.
Noem’s book, No Going Back, to be released May 7, has a number one ranking at Amazon. Publisher Center Street, a Hachette Book Group imprint, also publishes other right-wing politicians including Ben Carson, Newt Gingrich, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Endorsing the book are other right-wingers, including Donald Trump, Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy, athlete and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, and anti-LGBTQ extremist group creator Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok.
On Monday, as Mediaite reported, two Fox News pundits had had it.
Jason Chaffetz, a former GOP Congressman, said, “she just destroyed her political career. I don’t think there’s anybody on any side of the aisle, any human being that thinks it’s acceptable to go to a gravel pit and shoot a dog in the face and kill it when it’s 14 months old. That’s. I mean, that’s just hideous. So she’s done politically, and I’m a friend of hers. I served with her, but politically, there’s no recovering from this.”
Fox News media analyst Joe Concha said, “as a dog owner my whole life,” the story of Noem shooting her dog “absolutely makes my blood boil.”
“How utterly heartless do you have to be to shoot a 14-month-old dog in the face? Because look, if it wasn’t doing its job on the farm, or is attacking chicken or people, okay, you’re a public figure, or at least you have a platform in some way, shape, or form. Even if you’re a private citizen, you very easily could have posted somewhere, ‘I’m putting my dog up for adoption because maybe it’s not working out here on the ranch,’ and I can guarantee you many people would have raised their hand to take that dog in,” Concha said, adding, “she just destroyed any chance she had of being Donald Trump’s vice president, if she had any chance at all. There’s no going back from this.”
Right wing talk show host Megyn Kelly said Trump is “too smart” to “pick somebody who’s managed to do the impossible and unite Democrats and Republicans alike in their anger for this woman who shot her puppy in the face.”
At the right wing National Review, Jeffrey Blehar writes: “Let’s Get a Warrant for Kristi Noem’s Backyard.”
“I guess I just don’t like people who boast about shooting puppies,” Blehar adds on social media. “And goats. And horses. And who knows what else, until cops have done an aerial scan of the property and gotten a backhoe out to excavate the suspicious piles of dirt.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Just two weeks after Donald Trump urged radical leftists to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this November—because “he’s got some nice things about him” and “I happen to like him”—he’s suddenly taking a different tack.
In the wake of new polling suggesting RFK Jr. would siphon more votes away from Trump than President Joe Biden, Trump is stablin’ and geniusin’ up a storm, taking to his perpetual prevarication platform Truth Social to knock the wind out of the independent candidate’s campaign. His latest tirade comes just days after Trump claimed RFK the Lesser could hurt both major party candidates but “he might hurt Biden a little bit more.”
On Friday night, as Trump dithered between wishing his wife a happy birthday or lauding South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for her new and courageous puppy-murdering stance, he suddenly swung in an entirely different direction: claiming the guy he once praised as “very smart” and a “very good man” is actually a total disaster. And not because RFK Jr. would be forced to attend state dinners in a giant acrylic hamster ball to avoid infecting other world leaders with smallpox. No, it’s because Trump—and Republicans as a whole—are suddenly very nervous that Kennedy will loosen Trump’s once-reliable hold on the demon sperm vote.
As Daily Kos noted Tuesday, new polling from NBC News shows Kennedy support at 13 percent—but notably, he “picks up 15 percent of Trump's support in the head-to-head while attracting only 7 percent of Biden's original voters.” But that’s not all! In the Marist poll, Kennedy gains a point; and “17 percent of Trump voters threw their support behind Kennedy in this poll, compared to 11 percent of Biden voters.”
Which brings us to Friday’s panic.
“RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected,” Trump groused, while accidentally acknowledging that Biden won the 2020 election. “A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him. Junior’ is totally Anti-Gun, an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet…”
Ah, but he wasn’t done. There were more meticulously crafted bons mots to come.
“Page 2: His Radicalized Family will never allow him to be a Republican, and his Chief ‘Funder’ is the V.P. Candidate that nobody ever heard of, except her ex-husband, who’s been stripped of a big chunk of cash. She puts herself down as a businesswoman, or maybe a doctor, and actually, I guess you could say that she’s right. Her business was doing surgery on her husband’s wallet! She’s more Liberal than Junior’ by far, not a serious person, and only a Pot of Cash to help get her No Chance Candidate on the Ballot…”
In other words, “You’re not the bonkers conspiracy candidate—I am!”
Trump wrapped things up by noting a preference for Biden over Kennedy, with the closer “Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!”
Trump’s latest rants represent a stark departure from what he was saying just last year, after it was revealed that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had spent “months” recruiting RFK Jr. to run against Biden and serve as a “useful chaos agent.” In June of last year, when RFK Jr. was still running as a Democrat, Trump said he was a “very smart guy,” a “good guy,” and a “common sense guy.” He even lauded the Kennedy scion’s allegedly robust poll numbers, saying, “He’s a very good man and his heart is in the right place, and he’s doing really well! I saw a poll, he’s at 22. That’s pretty good.”
But what a difference a year makes.
[R]ecent polling broadly shows Kennedy drawing evenly from both of the major party candidates’ 2020 supporters. And Kennedy’s significantly higher favorable ratings among Republican voters suggests he has more room to eat into Trump’s vote share than Biden’s.
In addition, a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data shows far more interest in Kennedy from former Trump donors than people who previously contributed to Biden.
“If the Trump campaign doesn’t see this as a concern, then they’re delusional,” Republican consultant Alice Stewart said. “They should be looking at this from the standpoint that they can’t afford to lose any voters — and certainly not to a third-party candidate that shares some of [Trump’s] policy ideas.”
Meanwhile, according to a POLITICO analysis, RFK Jr. has already poached at least $1.6 million from more than 1,700 donors who gave to Trump’s campaign in 2020.
As we all know, Trump will say—or do—literally anything to get elected and stay out of prison. Actually—who are we kidding?—he’d do literally anything for an extra slice of chocolate cake. After all, this is the guy who put the “lip” in “solipsist.” For instance, he’s been whingeing about the temperature in the courtroom where his hush-money “I-fucked-America” trial is being held. So now, in addition to having an incorrigible deadbeat client, his lawyers have to worry about being cut open like tauntauns and worn for the duration of the trial like one of Liberace’s chinchilla capes.
You’d think the media would pick up on this pattern and report on it accurately, but they need to pretend the Republican nominee somehow isn’t the worst sentient being in the history of the mulitverse. For instance, they might want to make it crystal clear to the electorate that this exact absurd lie from 2016 has now been proven false, based on former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s testimony in court this week:
Of course, even Trump knows better than to claim RFK Jr.’s dad partied with Lee Harvey Oswald, only because it would be too unbelievable, even for MAGAs—not because it would be so gobsmackingly gauche. But we’d be forgiven for thinking he’d do it if he thought it would help his campaign.
Fortunately, Trump may not be able to gaslight his way to the presidency this year—at least if you believe renowned election oracle Allan Lichtman, the American University professor who put us all off our oats in 2016 when he (correctly, it turned out) predicted Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton. Lichtman, who’s correctly predicted the results of nine of the past 10 presidential elections (and would have predicted Bush vs. Gore correctly if Republicans weren’t such big fans of cheating), now says Biden has the inside track on 2024.
While Lichtman hasn’t made his prediction official yet, he now says that based on his model, “a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”
So there you go. Sanity—and Biden—might just prevail again. Especially if the not-quite-so-sane vote gets split between those other two dudes.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Lara Trump
Newly anointed RNC co-chair Lara Trump’s recent impassioned plea for folks to donate money, even if they currently don’t have any, would make P.T. Barnum blush.
“If you can’t afford a donation today,” said Lara, looking sleek and sophisticated in a dress that probably cost more than my car, “I ask that you save it for a later date. But if you could donate even as much as five dollars, it will go a long way.”
Here’s Lara Trump, metaphorically unfolding her tiny cardboard sign while standing on a median in the rain. If you don’t have even five bucks to donate, save up! You can do this! The young’uns can eat mayonnaise sandwiches for another month. Meemaw can skip a week of heart pills. For the love of all that’s holy, a BILLIONAIRE needs you to do your part! How can you sit idly by, selfishly keeping your lights on so you can heat some Dollar Tree Manwich on your one-working-burner stove?
Y’all disgust me. You can’t see me right now but I’m making the exact same face Trump would make if he ever heard Lara call him her “father in love.”
Do you seriously expect a (self) important billionaire like Donald Trump to pay his own astronomical legal bills for his many trials for his many-er misdeeds? Have you no compassion for this man who brags nonstop of his immense wealth? How is he supposed to sustain that lavish lifestyle without Other People’s Money?
Oh. You saw the golden toilets and now you expect him to pay his own bills? Well, you’re a monster is all I can figure out.
Unlike those downer ASPCA ads asking for donations, Lara Trump’s tone remains upbeat during the “ask.” Ironically, she’s obviously excited about the Biden economy: Five dollars will go a long way! Apparently, somebody loves growth envied by the rest of the world, eye-popping job gains, cooled inflation, record low unemployment and a booming stock market. (Yes, Fox News viewers, it’s true. Now back to your regularly scheduled “Let’s scare the hell outta anyone wanting to visit NYC.”)
Yes! Feel good about that five dollars but if you take a whack at the kids’ piggybanks you might bump it up to seven or eight dollars. THE CHILDREN SHOULDN’T BE EXEMPT! A billionaire is in need, and they can wait another year for a bicycle. Selfish parents beget selfish children. It’s hammer time!
I haven’t seen this kind of shameless, but utterly predictable, money-grabbing since I attended a tent revival years ago. The shiny-suited TV evangelist had preached a stemwinder for an hour or so, but it was time to shake down the faithful. With the organ music getting louder and louder (take note, Lara) he wiped his brow dramatically and assured us the money collected that sultry Southern evening would “go a long way.”
He told the assembled flock, primed and ready for fleecing, that if they’d sign over their paychecks (it was Friday in a textile town), they’d be “rewarded in heaven.” And people did it. I saw them. With my own eyes.
There’s an old saying, “Charity begins at home” that Lara Trump might want to pay attention to. I’m thinking of the roughly $500,000 donated to Trump’s campaign that was spent on Melania’s hairdresser and a fashion “advisor.” So far, a whopping $50 million donated to Trump’s 2024 campaign has gone directly to his lawyers.
It’s got to stick in the craw of even the most fervent supporter to know their hard-earned cash paid for Melania to find out whether she was a “spring” or “really more of a fall.”
At least with the Bible hawking you (eventually) get something tangible for your donation. Something you can put on display in your home and point to with…your finger. What? You thought I’d say “pride?” C’mon.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Former President Donald Trump in New York State Supreme Court on April 22, 2024
Former President Donald Trump and his allies often make their belief that the legal troubles he faces are all politically motivated.
In February, CBS News reported, "Polls show his supporters agree, with 66 percent of Republicans believing the legal cases against him have been handled unfairly. In contrast, 70 percent of Democrats feel Trump is being treated fairly."
In a Sunday, April 28 analysis, CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten insists that based on current polling, the ex-president's legal issues aren't serving him well at all.
"Trump’s success might make you believe that he has turned the conventional wisdom on its head – that somehow, his legal troubles are helping him politically," Enten writes.
"And while that may have been true in the primary, the general election is a different ballgame," he continues, "There isn’t much of a sign that Trump’s legal woes are helping him among the wider electorate, even if they aren’t hurting him necessarily."
Enten reports President Joe "Biden has, if anything, been the one who has picked up ground over the last few months, as both men have clinched their respective parties’ nominations." The CNN reporter notes the president "was behind by about two points on average during the height of the Republican primary a few months ago."
Enten reports:
Take, for example, the New York hush money case. It’s clear from the data that most Americans don’t think Trump did something illegal. Just 33% of Americans do, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll. Likewise, most Americans don’t think that if the charges were true that they would be disqualifying for the presidency.
In addition to that 33% who think Trump did something illegal, there’s another 33% who think he did something unethical, but not illegal, as it relates to his actions in the New York case. That’s two-thirds of the public who believe he did something wrong.
He emphasizes, "In fact, the people who are paying closer attention to Trump’s criminal cases are more likely to favor Biden than those who aren’t, according to polling from the Times."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Public parks belong to the public, right? A billionaire can't cordon off an acre of Golden Gate Park for his private party. But can a poor person — or anyone who claims they can't afford a home — take over public spaces where children play and families experience nature?
That is the question now before the Supreme Court case, Grants Pass v. Johnson. Before going into particulars, note that both Republican and Democratic politicians think the answer should be "no." That leaves activists who support the right of "the homeless" to take over public property. They want a "yes."
The case is a challenge to a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, that cities cannot evict "homeless" campers if there are more of them than the local shelters can accommodate. It stems from an ordinance issued by Grants Pass, Oregon, that strictly limits the opportunity to erect a home on public spaces. It forbids even wrapping oneself in a blanket while sitting or lying in public.
A conservative Ninth Circuit judge, Daniel Bress, issued an angry response to the ruling that, critics say, has actually encouraged the sprawling tent encampments tormenting the nine Western states in the court's jurisdiction. It's been noted that in the four years since the decision, homelessness in the states the Ninth Circuit covers grew by about 25% while falling in the rest of the country.
Bress urged the judges to just look out the windows of their San Francisco courthouse. They will see, he said, "homelessness, drug addiction, barely concealed narcotics dealing, severe mental health impairment, the post-COVID hollowing out of our business districts."
Gavin Newsom, Democratic governor of California, joins in the criticism. The Grants Pass decision, he says, has "impeded not only the ability to enforce basic health and safety measures, but also the ability to move people into available shelter beds and temporary housing."
The debate over the rights of the "homeless" has always stumbled over an agreed definition of the homeless population. Some may be families unable to meet rising rents. Some are mentally ill. Some are addicts, while others are "drug tourists." Some reject the accommodations at shelters, preferring to sleep under the stars.
Is the solution to let any of these groups take over parks where children play? Is it to let them visit squalor on the very business districts cities need to pay for public services, including theirs?
The city of Los Angeles holds that homeless camps deny pedestrians and the disabled use of the streets. Cities in Arizona have argued that the law is simply unworkable. The enormous encampment in Phoenix has reportedly cost Arizona millions of dollars and years of litigation.
Drawing lines isn't always easy. Can a city criminalize public urination by someone who doesn't have access to a toilet? What about lighting a fire to cook on? Addiction is not a crime, though it is constitutional to punish someone for using illegal drugs.
It may be necessary to dust off a term coined by John Kenneth Galbraith in the 1950s, though in a way the economist did not intend. It's the existence in this country of what he called "private affluence, public squalor." While the urban rich may have five acres at their country house for their kids to play on, their housekeepers' children have only public parks as their green playground.
We don't pretend here to have an answer for the homeless problem. Because the population is diverse, the answers must also be diverse. But one answer can't be to strip away the public's right to use the public spaces that ultimately belong to them.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A series of polls released this week show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s quixotic candidacy might attract more Republican-leaning voters in 2024 than Democrats. That may have been what prompted former President Donald Trump to release a three-post screed attacking him.
On Friday night, the 45th president of the United States set his sights on RFK Jr., insisting to his millions of followers that the independent presidential candidate is actually a "Radical Left Liberal" who was secretly working to help President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. He even attempted to assign Kennedy one of his patented nicknames: "Junior,'" notably with an unexplained apostrophe that he repeated throughout all three posts.
"A Vote for Junior' would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him," Trump wrote.
"I lived with RFK Jr. in New York and watched him convince Governor Cuomo to make Environmental moves that were outright NASTY," he continued. "I’d even take Biden over Junior’, because our Country would last a year or two longer prior to collapse - But it would be dead either way."
"His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy," he added. "Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!"
The ex-president's rage toward RFK Jr. may be due to a new Quinnipiac poll that suggests his candidacy is more attractive to prospective Trump voters than Biden voters. That poll shows that while Trump is still slightly ahead of Biden in swing states, the two are in a dead heat nationally. And when RFK Jr. is thrown into the mix, Trump's vote share diminishes.
According to Axios, while Biden and Trump are tied in a head-to-head matchup with Kennedy on the ballot, Trump's share of votes is significantly larger when RFK Jr. isn't an option. This means that the independent's 2024 campaign could siphon off enough votes from Trump to push Biden over the edge in a close contest.
"That dynamic is consistent with two other polls — a Marist survey on Monday and a NBC News one on Sunday — that show Biden's margin increasing when RFK and other third party candidates are included," Axios reporter Hans Nichols wrote.
RFK Jr.'s appeal to Trump's base may be due to the conspiratorial tone of his campaign. Kennedy became well-known in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic as a vaccine skeptic. In the past, Kennedy has said he is personally "pro-vaccine" and that he's had all of his children vaccinated, but he sang a different tune on a 2021 podcast. CNN reported that in an episode of the "Health Freedom for Humanity" podcast, RFK Jr. encouraged parents to tell strangers to not vaccinate their kids.
"For many, many years, I think parents were so gaslighted, and they were scapegoated, and they were vilified and marginalized, so that even parents of kids who were very, very badly injured, knew what happened to their kid, but they were just reluctant to talk about it," he said. "And I think now those days are over."
Kennedy has also repeated Republican talking points about gun violence. In 2023, he told NewsNation that he viewed the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as reason to believe that gun control was a moot point, and added "I'm not going to take people's guns away."
"Anybody who tells you that they’re going to be able to reduce gun violence through gun control at this point I don’t think is being realistic," Kennedy said.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Rupert Murdoch
With a net worth of nearly $20 billion, far-right media mogul Rupert Murdoch has deep enough pockets to settle with virtually any litigant — except one. And a failure to settle in this particular case could result in the 93-year-old being forced to testify under oath.
The Daily Beast recently reported that Prince Harry — also known as the Duke of Sussex — is still proceeding with his lawsuit against Murdoch over his alleged knowledge of a hacking and cover-up scandal involving News Group Newspapers (NGN), which is Murdoch's family of UK-based tabloids. Harry has so far refused to settle with Murdoch, meaning the suit could lead to a potentially humiliating public trial for Murdoch should plaintiffs prove he knew about illegal hacking practices.
"If true, these allegations would establish very serious, deliberate wrongdoing at NGN, conducted on an institutional basis on a large scale," presiding judge Mr. Justice Fancourt (the stylized title of English High Court judge Sir Timothy Fancourt) said. He added that proceedings could "establish a concerted effort to conceal wrongdoing."
Beast correspondent Clive Irving reported last year on the depth of the cover-up at former NGN publication News of the World, which Harry's lawyers uncovered during the discovery process. The Duke of Sussex's attorneys found that "[NGN] executives had wiped a trail of emails, destroyed hard drives and removed many boxes full of documents" relating to the hacking scandal.
The same lawyers representing Prince Harry in the suit also represented actor Hugh Grant, who, unlike Harry, settled out of court for what he referred to as an "enormous sum" with NGN. He emphasized that he "would love to see all the allegations they deny tested in court." However, he added that "the rules around civil litigation mean that if I proceed to trial and the court awards me damages that are even a penny less than the settlement offer I would have to pay the legal costs of both sides."
"Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers are very expensive," Grant said. "So even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching £10 million in costs. I’m afraid I am shying at that fence."
Harry's refusal to settle with Murdoch's tabloid empire could be a deliberate attempt to force the media mogul to testify, as the British royal has previously agreed to settle other lawsuits with publications involved in the hacking scandal. The Associated Press (AP) reported in February that Prince Harry settled with Mirror Group Newspapers over its own hacking practices.
"Phone hacking by British newspapers dates back more than two decades to a time when scoop-hungry journalists regularly phoned the numbers of royals, celebrities, politicians and sports stars and, when prompted to leave a message, punched in default passcodes to eavesdrop on voicemails," the AP explained. "The practice erupted into a full-blown scandal in 2011 when Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World was revealed to have intercepted messages of a murdered girl, relatives of dead soldiers and victims of a bombing. Murdoch closed the paper, and a former News of the World editor was jailed."
Prince Harry's lawsuit may not be the only one that results in a public trial with Murdoch on the witness stand. Earlier this year, a judge allowed voting software company Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News to proceed, which is now in the discovery process. While Fox News was able to settle with Dominion Voting Systems last year for $787 million, Smartmatic attorney Erik Connolly said in 2023 he is "looking to take this case through trial" and that his clients want "the vindication of a jury verdict in their favor."
"We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025," a Fox News spokesperson said last year.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
President Joe Biden
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines on Thursday to restore net neutrality. The move fulfills a promise made by President Joe Biden in 2021 and effectively restores regulations put in place during the Obama administration.
“In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote.
Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) must give the same level of access to all data and websites. However, service providers are against net neutrality because they want the ability to charge for a higher tier of access or provide more bandwidth to sources they own. Without net neutrality, they were also allowed to block access to sites or to slow their data rates.
Under Donald Trump, net neutrality rules were rapidly dismantled, with Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai celebrating the destruction. Pai was previously an attorney at Verizon and called concern over how ISPs would treat consumers’ “hysteria.” Pai resigned when Biden took office, but the damage he did remained until this week.
The initial adoption of net neutrality took over a decade after it was first proposed in 2002 and considered by the FCC in 2005. Along with other progressive sites, Daily Kos has been involved in the fight for net neutrality from the beginning and celebrated its implementation under President Barack Obama.
Concerns over how ISPs could use their control over the internet are well-founded, and the end of net neutrality under Trump affected service for many Americans, even if they didn’t realize it.
Without net neutrality,USA Today reports, ISPs can charge streaming providers a fee for high-quality access, even when that access comes through an app. That fee ends up being paid by consumers, though it may not be visible on their bills.
The lack of net neutrality doesn’t just impact data sources, but also the end users. Mallory Knodel of the Center for Democracy and Technology described what she called the “dirt road effect” where low-income subscribers to ISPs can find that their data traffic has been “deprioritized” leading to an internet that is slower and less reliable.
AsWired notes, net neutrality is returning to an internet that has seen major changes. Broadband access is now much more common and more vital than when Trump and Pai pulled the plug in 2017.
The importance of high-speed internet was underscored during the pandemic when millions of schoolchildren found their classrooms moved online. And it’s equally vital to the growing numbers of workers who perform some or all of their tasks from home.
The more people who depend on fast and reliable internet, the more important net neutrality becomes.
It’s unclear if this ruling is here to stay. Without solid legislation, the next Republican administration could simply tip the power back to service providers. Pai may now be working for a Washington, D.C., law firm, but he took time this week to call restoring net neutrality “a complete waste of time.” And he’d probably be happy to trot back to the FCC offices long enough to stamp it out again.
But for now, Trump is out, Pai is sidelined, and net neutrality is restored. That’s all worth celebrating.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Sen. Jon Tester
Republicans can win back control of the U.S. Senate by flipping two Democratic seats. But that may prove difficult if the GOP continues to get out-worked by the Democratic Party's fundraising machine.
A Friday report by Bloomberg's Bill Allison revealed that despite having the support of conservative billionaires like investor Ken Griffin and the Charles Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity infrastructure, the GOP is still unable to catch up with Democrats in the 2024 money race. As of March 31, Ballotpedia's tally of party committee fundraising shows that Democrats and their affiliated House and Senate campaign arms have raised a total of $462.2 million in the 2024 campaign cycle, with $157.3 million in cash on hand. Republicans and their congressional fundraising operations, on the other hand, have raised $375 million with $114 million on hand.
"The money woes are a headwind for Senate Republicans, who seek to win a majority to pursue legislation to bolster US-Mexico border security and renew expiring tax cuts," Allison wrote. "It’s also a warning sign for presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who needs to win many of the same states hosting crucial Senate races."
Currently, the math favors Republican Senate candidates far more than Democrats, with the GOP only having to defend 11 seats compared to Democrats' 23. The most competitive Republican contests are in reliably red states, where Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) are seeking their second and third six-year terms, respectively.
Democrats, however, are in a far more precarious position, with several senators in highly competitive races hoping to win another term in states where Trump won easily in both 2016 and 2020. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is not seeking another term, and Republicans are expected to easily win that seat given that the Mountain State went for Trump by double-digit margins in the last two elections.
This means that the GOP — which currently has 49 U.S. senators — could win back the majority by taking just one of the close contests in either Arizona, Montana, or Ohio. After Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) announced she would not be running for reelection, the Grand Canyon State's Senate race will be between Republican election denier Kari Lake or Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ). Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) is seeking a fourth term in November, and is the lone Democrat representing a statewide seat in the Big Sky State, which Trump also won handily in both 2016 and 2020.
Ohio's U.S. Senate race may be the most expensive, given the Buckeye State's wealth of Electoral College votes (17 in 2024), longtime incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown's (D-OH) bid to keep his seat for a fourth term and the surprising result last year to permanently enshrine abortion rights in a now-comfortably red state that Trump won in both of his past campaigns. Ohio Republicans nominated Bernie Moreno in last month's primary, who has indicated support for a national abortion ban after 15 weeks of gestation.
Allison reported that the GOP has attempted to shore up its fundraising gap with Democrats by recruiting wealthy candidates who are able to invest large sums of their own personal wealth into their own campaigns. But GOP candidates are even trailing in those races with the exception of businessman Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, who slightly outperformed Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in first quarter fundraising by loaning his campaign $8 million.
Businessman Tim Sheehy, who is running against Tester in Montana, is one example of that strategy in practice. The former Navy SEAL who launched his own aerial firefighting business has raised $8.3 million so far in the 2024 cycle, and has $1.9 million in cash on hand according to data compiled by Opensecrets. However, Tester is running up the score with more than $32 million raised and $12.6 million in cash on hand.
Trump's own legal woes could also be holding back the GOP from investing more in down-ballot races like the Arizona, Montana and Ohio Senate races. After his daughter-in-law Lara Trump was elected as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the Trump campaign and the RNC entered into an agreement in which Trump's affiliated PACs — which help pay his legal expenses — get a cut of funds raised by the RNC before they actually go into the RNC's own accounts. The former president not only has two massive civil judgements adding up to a hefty nine-figure sum to contend with, but he is also having to pay to defend himself from 88 felony counts in three separate jurisdictions this year.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Melania Trump at the White House
Friday marked former First Lady Melania Trump's 54th birthday, which was made more awkward by the fact that she spent it without her husband — who was in court defending himself from allegations that he covered up payments to women to keep quiet about extramarital affairs with him.
Stephanie Grisham, who was chief of staff to the former president's wife during her time in the White House's East Wing, said during a Friday interview on CNN that Melania's absence from the trial proceedings is likely not a coincidence.
"I'm sure she's not happy about it," Grisham said. "It's not fun to hear these details."
Grisham told CNN that because the details Pecker revealed on the stand were not previously known to the public, they were also not previously known to Melania Trump. She added that the video Trump posted to social media celebrating his wife's birthday and showing footage of her at the White House was a purely performative gesture that Melania likely saw right through.
"I rolled my eyes when he did that. It was so beyond inappropriate," Grisham said.
"[Melania] and I talked before about how they actually weren't really birthday people, that that wasn't actually a big deal to either of them... and so that was a performance for voters. That was not to her. Same with this video. That is a performance to try and get voters," she continued.
"It didn't surprise me at all. I'm sure she rolled her eyes too, because it was just so typical, selfish Donald Trump," she added.
The first week of former President Donald Trump's first criminal trial featured the testimony of David Pecker, who was the CEO of American Media Inc. — the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper — at the time of the 2016 presidential election. Pecker testified on the stand that while Trump had previously been concerned about how his wife would react to negative stories about him in the press, his main concern after he launched his campaign was about how negative coverage would impact his presidential ambitions.
Pecker's main point of contact was Michael Cohen, who was Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's central argument in his 34-count felony indictment of the ex-president is that Cohen facilitated payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — both of whom claimed to have had affairs with Trump — in order to buy their silence so voters wouldn't have the chance to be influenced by their stories. Those payments were then allegedly labeled as legal fees, though Cohen maintains there was no legal retainer involved in those payments. Trump continues to deny Daniels' and McDougal's allegations.
During one exchange, Pecker said on the stand that he had conversations with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House Communications Director Hope Hicks — who is expected to testify during Trump's trial — about possibly extending McDougal's contract to keep her silent.
"Both of them said that they thought it was a good idea," Pecker said on Thursday.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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